Oooh, sebs that's great! Suddenly it all kicks into motion!
Minnie Glad to hear you are feeling a bit more composed today. Babybombs from close friends/groups are the hardest. I went through a phase where all my friends from my baby group were announcing their second, and I am now more or less the last one. I remember feeling so jealous and so guilty at the same time when the babies were born. Do what you need to do - and if that means going on low contact, that's totally OK.
texta I'm afraid I disagree with you - formal testing of new treatments is absolutely necessary and required, how on earth would you find out otherwise if a) something really works, and it's not just a fluke and b) is actually safe to use?
There are so many potential treatments out there, and sadly, many people (like all of us!) are so desperate to try anything that might have a minute chance of working, but that is so dangerous.
Finding anything that is safe in pregnancy is particularly difficult because it is immensely tricky to set up clinical studies with pregnant women!
The reason why they are still not routinely prescribing steroids is that there are still very few solid data that they actually work in pregnancy and provide real benefits to a majority of patients. Costs play a big role as well, sadly - and steroids aren't cheap either. And they are only useful to a few - the majority of rmc'ers does not have immune issues.
The hard truth is that no one (government or pharma industry) wants to spend lots of money developing drugs that are only useful for a small number of people.
Sadly, the whole process of determining the efficacy, safety and cost-effectiveness of new treatments take a very long time, on average you are looking at about 10 years from discovery of a drug to it making it to the market. Of course there are flaws in the system, but overall, it is in our best interest.
Sorry for the rant - I used to work in cancer drug development, and always got asked when we'll have the cure for cancer...